These discussions could be guided by a mental health professional or a trained staff member to ensure that they are conducted in a supportive and respectful manner. Several steps are recommended to effectively integrate mental health education into the curriculum and achieve these goals (Table 1). Better health literacy may equip children and adolescents with vital coping skills, foster emotional intelligence, and support their overall well-being, ultimately promoting a healthier and more successful future. By promoting mental health and well-being, a proactive and holistic approach helps students develop resilience. Inclusive learning environments that acknowledge and accommodate diverse needs contribute beneficially to creating an environment where all pupils, including those with mental health challenges, feel welcomed, supported, and empowered to succeed 31,32,33. To ensure comprehensive support, it is essential to address mental health issues across all contexts.

Institutional Review Board Statement

To the extent that school-based mental health initiatives are meant to decrease rates of diagnosed mental disorder and increase access to treatment, those two goals alone may be in conflict with anything other than service provision to already-identified youth. Psychiatric residential treatment can help youth whose educational needs cannot be met in a traditional school setting and whose health is at risk while living in their community. School-based providers funded by the mental health system, rather than education-system-funded direct hiring of providers, might clarify expectations and confusion around responsibilities for service provision. Clinicians employed by mental health agencies working within schools report fewer competing responsibilities than school-employed clinicians. Mental health policy should renew focus on the goal of reducing rates of mental disorder and reducing impairment from symptoms by way of providing services to youth with current need of mental health intervention. Research on school phone bans is recent, limited, and mixed, but some studies suggest a small improvement in academic achievement for disadvantaged students.

At the school level (e.g., school characteristics, climate), participants recommended that the team become part of the school culture and that we consider flexible format offerings. Beyond content adaptations, themes generated in our analysis process informed adaptations to our intervention procedures. Themes generated in our analysis process informed adaptations to our intervention content (see Table 4 for sample modifications by theme).

1. Included Studies

Gains in mental health literacy affirm Hypothesis 1 and offer agreement with earlier research that demonstrated increases in mental health literacy following other mental health program presentations 9,10,11. This study provides support for the effectiveness of the Coming Up for AIR program. While some studies measured knowledge and attitudes separately, a single measure of mental health https://www.thecommunityguide.org/findings/mental-health-multi-tiered-trauma-informed-school-programs-improve-mental-health-among-youth.html literacy was used here in a manner similar to other researchers 14,21,22,23. This trend was also noted in several of the review articles and Mellor found that in the majority of studies (13 of 17), program effectiveness was measured by a survey developed to reflect the specific program content 19,20.

• Conduct issues may show as an ongoing pattern of aggression toward others, and serious violations of rules and social norms at home, in school, and with peers.
• We received detailed participant feedback regarding mental health team- and school-level considerations for intervention delivery.
• If any disagreement arises, the disagreement shall be resolved by discussion between the two reviewers and a third reviewer (J. X.).
• Tall and Biel (2023) recently reviewed the effects of social determinants of health on child and family mental health, emphasizing their role in exacerbating mental health disparities.
• Furthermore, this article highlights the need for interdisciplinary collaboration involving general practitioners, mental health professionals, community organizations, and policymakers in crafting and implementing support strategies.

Middle school students were more likely to seek help for both themselves and friends compared to high schoolers. One might postulate that repeated messaging, messaging from multiple sources, and messaging at different points in time are crucial in enhancing mental health literacy in youth. Partial eta squared was large for mental health literacy differences between pre- and post-test, suggesting meaningful change. While this study proposed no differences in gains for lower or upper grade levels, the interaction term was marginally significant, technically supporting Hypothesis 5.

2. Study 2 Results—Help-Seeking Behavior

It is hard for some parents to understand what is happening with their child or they don’t have the time or resources to follow through on like, outside of school services or they don’t want to accept in some cases that their child may need, you know, some mental health help. Parents and school personnel described how many parents in the community did not have the bandwidth and/or ability to engage in their children’s school-based activities. Parents felt that “all the classes are important” for their children and did not want to have their children pulled from class to attend a mental health program. Similarly, a school mental health provider noted that “after school, she doesn’t have luck typically with meeting students” due to bus schedules and other factors. Students, parents, and school personnel highlighted the importance of building trust and reducing mental health stigma among the student population, and they suggested two key strategies. One teacher explained, “I do agree some type of training to identify, like what anxiety and depression looks like in order to … refer students to the clinic who desperately need it.” School administrators agreed that mental health training would benefit teachers given their potential role identifying and referring students to mental health services.